This is all taken from an interview over on Collider with Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull, where he talks the brand new Godzilla which opens worldwide on Friday and the possibility of it and Pacific Rim SOMEDAY crossing over.

Why do you think audiences now like monster movies even though they have been out of fashion for so long?

“You know, the truth is at Legendary we really make movies that we want to see, and someday I’m sure that won’t work but- I remember, it’s obviously a completely different thing, but our first movie was Batman Begins, and there was a lot of things about Batman back then, and there was this guy named Christopher Nolan, that seemed to have worked out okay with him at the helm. So I think it’s just about the execution, and we want to make sure, from the very first teaser all the way through, the fans knew that we were also fans. There’s all kind of things that I think are tough execution, but if you get a great filmmaker like we did with Gareth and- I don’t know did you guys see the movie?”

Yes.

“It’s clearly my fault if people don’t like the movie, but that’s the movie we wanted to make.”

 

Can you talk about the process of luring Bryan Cranston onboard and what he brought to the movie?

“I think this is first time in over a decade of doing this that every single first choice actor said yes, and if you think about that – first of all the call is it’s a Godzilla movie and the second thing is it’s a director doing his second movie. Bryan, in particular, I think was pretty skeptical going in and once he understood the tone and what we were trying to pull off and then, more importantly, sat down with Gareth, he said yes, as they all ended up saying yes. And you can’t really threaten Heisenberg, so we couldn’t even go that tact with it. But he’s phenomenal, if you guys saw it.”

Now that Legendary is affiliated with Universal is there a chance that someday we might see a King Kong versus Godzilla movie?

“[Laughs] Wow, that’s…that’s pretty interesting.”

You need to get on the phone with Peter and start talking about that.

“Yeah, well look, our saying around our shop, “You can never have too many giant robots or monsters.”

Godzilla’s kind of a hero in this, he kind of comes in and stops these anomaly’s and King Kong’s kind of an anomaly so it kind of makes sense.

“I love it all.”

I’ll write pitch and send it off to you.

“I’ll hear it, absolutely.”

So I have to ask you as a fan of another universe that you helped create and a fan of this universe that you’re hoping to reboot, if you will, is it possible that the world of Pacific Rim and Godzilla are the same world or are they completely different?

“They’re completely different worlds.”

Am I the only one to ask or are other people asking?

“You know, you’re the only one that has asked it in that way. It was very specific versus saying, “Is there any way Godzilla would ever fight-?” or something like that.”

I asked Guillermo point blank when Pacific Rim was coming out and Godzilla was being put together I’m like, “This could be a fun crossover.”

[Laughs]

Universal has Universal Monsters, I don’t know how you feel about Universal Monsters.

“I’m a huge fan and I think that’s a rich tapestry, of course.”

Is it something that Legendary is like, “hmmmm” or is it something that you’re like “We got Jurassic World, we’re good”?

“Look, when it comes to world class amazing storytelling opportunities we have an insatiable appetite so it was not lost on us that they had cool stuff like that.”

They have an amazing IP list.

“Absolutely.”

ABOUT >> Mary Anne Butler
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